Friday, December 3, 2010

Comings & Goings - Chicago

Downtown Chicago, lighted for the holidays (I love lights in trees; I wish such festiveness were visible all over the city)Chicago's skyscrapers, looking towards Michigan AvenueOn Chicago Street, right near Northwestern's Chicago campusThe Luc Tillmans billboard in front of the Museum of Contemporary ArtThe extraordinary Roscoe Mitchell and his ensemble, at the AACM's 45th Anniversary Celebration at the Museum of Contemporary Art (flautist Nicole Mitchell is at the far right)Roscoe Mitchell, playing his alto sax, at the AACM 45th Anniversary Celebration at the MCAMembers of Renee Baker's Brass Band Epiphany, letting loose (they were incredible)Fake movie set café in my neighborhood (it will appear, I imagine, in the movie ContagionThe movie café's post-filming interiorFake movie snowMy undergraduate honors advisee, Simon Han, who was awarded second prize in the Union League of Chicago's Civic & Arts Foundation's Creative Writing College Division competition, for his story "Bear Hands" Streetcorner puppet show, Andersonville neighborhood (I passed this on my way to see Rikki Beadle-Blair's new film FitZakes Mda, who was visiting writer in residence at the university's Center for the Writing Arts, delivered a smart and insightful lecture on the relationship between landscape and his writing (I have been a fan of his for years, so it was marvelous to meet him in person)On November 30 at the Silver Room, Artistically Linked was hosting a multi-artist-art show; each week leading up to that, you could see the artists working on the installation, so I caught painter/grafittist Rahmaan Statik at workLiterary scholar Jahan Ramazani gave a terrific talk at the university on the relationship between postcolonial poetries and affiliated discourses (I am still studying my notes on this one; it opened a number of doors, so to speak; and he even played clips of poet Patience Agbabi reading/rapping!)Who says Chicago doesn't have its own flavor: Rogers Park's very own PrinceRogers Park Prince from a distanceMelissa Harris-Perry spoke at the university on Michelle Obama, and was nothing less than incandescentIndependent scholar Justin Spring gave a talk on his acclaimed study of queer scholar, tattoo artist, porn writer, and archivist Samuel Steward: Secret Historian: The Life of Times of Samuel Steward: Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2010).An artist working on a mural in Rogers Park